Ren'Py Modify Script Load

Modifies which script files Ren'Py will load. This can improve (re)load times during development.

This is done by modifying the extension of the script filenames. We also instruct git to skip them in the worktree so that the scripts are not detected as changed.

Good candidates to exclude to improve load times are:

• Translation files (can also be handled by config.defer_tl_scripts)
• Scripts for scenes you are not currently modifying
• Special screens (eg. gallery)
• Files with long init python blocks

Description

On larger Ren'Py projects, it can take a lot of time to load and reload the game. This can make it tedious to test changes quickly.

As part of the lifecycle of a Ren'Py game, the engine reads every single .rpy and _ren.py file in your game from scratch whenever you (re)load the game. This can lead to slow down since it's processing content from parts of the game that you may not be working on at the moment.

To speed up loading, this script will ignore selected .rpy script files by changing their extension so the Ren'py engine will not read them. We can also tell the version control software (in this case git) to ignore that the file was renamed using the --skip-worktree flag in git update-index.

Usage

Make sure to add *.ignore (or whatever you choose with the --extension argument) to your .gitignore file.

python3 main.py [ options... ]

Arguments

--help

Displays a help messages with all the commands available.

--exclude <filelist>

Provide the path to a file that contains a list of all the scripts to exclude

--restore <filelist>

Provide the path to a file that contains a list of all the scripts to restore

--extension <ext>

The extension to add to script files to prevent them from being loaded. Defaults to '.ignore'

--projectdir <dir>

The directory of the game project. Git commands are run here, and script paths are relative to this directory.

--no-git

If given, git update-index --[no]-skip-worktree will not be run

--force-no-skip-worktree

If given and restoring, forces git update-index --no-skip-worktree to run on all scripts in the game directory, not just the ones in the filelist.

Filelists

To specify which scripts to exclude, make use of glob strings. The ** wildcard works recursively.

An example of a filelist is shown below. More examples can be found in the filelist folder:

game/tl/**/*.rpy

# Comments are allowed
game/scripts/dir/*.rpy
game/scripts/heavy_script.rpy

• Specifying .rpy will automatically handle .rpyc, .rpyb, and .rpymc
• Specifying .py will automatically handle .pyc, .pyo, and .pyi
• If a wildcard is used at the end (eg. game/tl/*) then both Ren'Py and Python scripts will be handled.

Possible Issues

An exception will be thrown if the game tries to access a variable, function, or class in one of the excluded scripts.

To get around this, either:

1. Restore files, remove the line corresponding to the script in from the filelist, then exclude files again; or
2. Move the definition to a different file that you will not exclude

Acknowledgements

Thanks to MiiNiPaa for the idea (Source)